System and method for aggregating legal orders

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods for generating and aggregating electronic versions of legal documents are provided. The generated documents may be made available to receiving parties for additional input or processing. In some embodiments, documents are made available in compliance with statutory or regulatory requirements regarding the proper service of the documents. The electronic documents may be converted to a standardized format or may be formatted for distribution to the document recipients according to the needs of each recipient. The system and method may collect and aggregate the electronic documents so as to provide them to the document recipients in a batch format to allow for more efficient distribution and processing.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods forgenerating, aggregating, distributing, and responding to legal orders.

BACKGROUND

Banks and other financial institutions are frequently required toperform certain actions affecting customer accounts at the request ororder of various third parties. For example, such actions may be orderedby courts, various enforcement agencies, and/or law firms. The knownmethods of generating, transmitting, receiving, and processing theseorders and other legal documents are labor-intensive and can involve themanual input of data on both the part of the issuer and the recipient ofthe order. Often there are multiple recipients, with variousrequirements regarding the receipt and processing of such orders. Addingto the complexity of the process, the transmittal of certain orders mustcomply with burdensome regulatory, statutory, or other restrictions. Forexample, under certain service of process rules, each recipient of anorder must be verified and receipt of an order confirmed. As not allreceiving institutions use compatible systems, a sender may generateorders that do not conform to each institution's requirements for orderprocessing. Alternatively, the receiving institution may be required toconvert incompatible orders to conform to its own processingrequirements.

These and other shortfalls in known systems lead to inefficienciesresulting from the manual creation of an order at each receiving partyto ensure proper service of the order. Not only does this add to thecost of preparing and processing these types of orders, but it also canintroduce delay and the potential for error in the process. It istherefore appreciated that a need exists for systems and methods forgenerating and aggregating legal orders such as court orders, levies,garnishments, subpoenas, or similar documents enabling enforcementagencies, law firms, and similar entities to generate official orders,and once created, efficiently provide those orders to entities such asbanks and other financial entities for processing, compliance, or otheractions.

SUMMARY

In an exemplary embodiment, a system receives input from a user at theenforcement agency which comprises the various pieces of informationrequired to generate an electronic version of a legal document. Certainof this information is required by statute in order to be valid andenforceable. Portions of the required information can be in the form ofa document template or other pre-populated information source. Otherpieces of information can be entered by the user or, in certainexemplary embodiments, may be automatically extracted from various datasources available to the user or organization with which the user isaffiliated. When the document has been populated by the user, certainexemplary embodiments may provide the user with an opportunity to selectthe institutions which are to receive or otherwise have access to thegenerated document. The generated document and documents may then betransmitted to a centralized database.

In some exemplary embodiments, the documents are then provided to theselected receiving institutions in a preselected format. The preselectedformat can be a standardized format that can be interpreted by computersystems in place at a receiving institution or directly by receivinginstitution personnel. Such formats may comprise manual input ofdocument information, optical character recognition (OCR) and/or variouselectronic document formats. In such embodiments, the standardizedformat can be further interpreted and parsed by the receivinginstitution's computer systems.

In certain embodiments, interpretation and parsing of a standardizedformat can be performed prior to transmission to the receivinginstitution. Thus, the requirements of the receiving system arepredetermined and used by the exemplary embodiment to create electronicfiles for consumption by systems at the receiving institution.

In some exemplary embodiments, the documents created by a user areaggregated with documents created by that user and others such that thedocuments can be provided in an electronic batch to one or morereceiving institutions.

The above and other aspects and advantages of the present disclosurewill become more readily apparent from the following description andfigures, illustrating by way of example the principles of the conceptsof the disclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other features of the present disclosure will become betterunderstood with regard to the following description and accompanyingdrawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an exemplary order aggregation system;

FIG. 2 is a diagram of a user that is entering information into acomputerized system to generate court documents according to anexemplary embodiment;

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a user that is entering information into acomputerized system to generate notices, transmittals, and other legaldocuments according to an exemplary embodiment;

FIG. 4 is a diagram of a user that is entering recipient selectioninformation into a computerized system to identify electronic documentsand their associated recipients according to an exemplary embodiment;and

FIG. 5 is a flow chart of the steps taken by an exemplary embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

This detailed description merely describes exemplary embodiments of thepresent disclosure and is not intended to limit the scope of thedisclosure in any way to the embodiments described herein. Indeed, thedisclosed concepts are broader than the exemplary embodiments.

FIG. 1 illustrates a diagram of an exemplary order aggregation system100. As illustrated, a plurality of users 102 may enter documentinformation into computing devices 104. It will be further appreciatedthat computing devices 104 may comprise one or more desktop or laptopcomputers, tablets, smartphones, or the like. Computing devices 104 mayaccept user input via an input device, such as a physical or virtualkeyboard, mouse, touch screen, or the like. Computing devices 104 mayfurther be attached or otherwise associated with a display fordisplaying user input or other information at the computing devices 104.Computing devices 104 may further comprise or be associated withperipheral devices such as a scanner or similar optical input device. Insome embodiments, information or documents relating to an order to begenerated at computing devices 104 may be input via a scanned document.It will be appreciated that various methods of recognizing such inputsmay be utilized with the order aggregation system 100, such as opticalcharacter recognition (OCR) or similar technology known to those ofskill in the art. In some embodiments, computing devices 104 may beconfigured to convert handwritten portions of scanned documents tocomputer readable text. While different configurations of computerhardware and software associated with computing devices 104 areenvisioned, computing devices 104 comprise at least a processor incommunication with a memory, such that the processor can be configuredto execute software instructions stored in the memory. While describedas a plurality, it will be appreciated that users 102 and computingdevices 104 and their equivalents may be described similarly in singularform, e.g. user 102 and computer device 104, without deviating from thefeatures and functions of the disclosure.

Computing devices 104 may further be configured to communicate with eachother or additional systems, such as database 108 and documentrecipients 110, over a network, such as the Internet, intranet, or thelike. In certain exemplary embodiments, the computing device 104, via anassociated processor and memory, may execute software that provides anorder aggregation user interface for the users 102. In certainembodiments, the software may be a series of instructions embodied on anon-transitory computer readable medium, such as a compact disk, thumbdrive, or the like. The software may also be configured to processdocument information input by the users 102 or input to the computingdevice via peripheral devices such as a scanner, to generate and modifyelectronic documents. As used herein, electronic documents may includeany digital file suitable to organize and store information and data. Itwill be appreciated that electronic documents may include additionaldata, e.g. metadata, that further describes and/or characterizes theinformation contained within the electronic document. In someembodiments, the software that provides the user interface may resideand be executed on a computer server or other device (not shown) that islocated remotely from the computing devices 104 of the users 102. Insome embodiments, the user interface may be delivered or implemented viaa webpage or electronic portal displayed on the computing devices 104,while the receipt and processing of the document information takes placeremotely at a computer server or other device. In some embodiments, thecomputer devices 104 may access the user interface through an electronicportal or website. In certain embodiments, the electronic portal orwebsite is hosted on, or in communication with, the database 108. Stillother embodiments may comprise a mixture of approaches, wherein asoftware program may be executed on the computing devices 104 butdocument information is processed at a computer server or other devicelocated remotely from the computing devices 104, e.g. database 108. Asillustrated in FIG. 1, electronic documents 106 generated by atcomputing devices 104 may be provided to a database 108 or similarcentralized data repository.

Once received at the database 108, the electronic documents 106 may betransmitted from the database 108 to one or more document recipients 110as the result of selections made by users 102. Database 108 mayaggregate documents associated with a single order or a single documentrecipient in order to transmit the documents in a batch or similargrouping. In some embodiments, documents may be batched according tocharacteristics such as the sender, the order type (e.g. levy, courtorder, subpoena, information subpoena restraining notice (ISRN), etc.),legal entity, or the like. It will be appreciated that additionalbatching characteristics or combinations of thereof may be used toaggregate documents. In some embodiments, the batching or grouping isdone before transmission to the database 108 according to userselections or preferences. In certain embodiments, the selections may bemade via a user interface at computing device 104 as referenced above.In other embodiments, the document recipients 110 may access thedatabase 108 through a webpage or portal to retrieve documents orbatches of documents that have been identified by users 102 as availableto the document recipients 110.

In some embodiments, after receipt and access of the order or document,e.g. electronic documents 106, document recipients 110 may process theorders and send documents or data required by the order back to thecourt or entity that generated the order, e.g. user 102. In certainembodiments, the document recipients may upload the completed order orrequired documents and/or data directly to database 108. In someembodiments, document recipients may access database 108 using a websiteor portal. For example, a user 102 may generate a levy order (e.g.electronic documents 106) at computing system 104 which is sent todocument recipients 110 via database 108. The answer to the levy ordermay be sent back to the sender (e.g. user 102) via database 108. Inanother example, user 102 may generate a production subpoena which issent to the document recipients 110 via database 108. The requiredproduction materials may then be directly uploaded by the documentrecipients 110 to database 108 for access by users 102. It will beappreciated, that in certain embodiments, a common user interface (e.g.website or portal) may be used by both the users 102 and the documentrecipients 110 to send and receive the electronic documents 106 and/oradditional documents, data, or information required in order to complywith an order.

In some embodiments, users 102 may determine access rights to theelectronic documents 106 stored at database 108 for one or more documentrecipients 110. In certain embodiments, access rights are pre-determinedby the content of the order, wherein the order specifies specificentities or parties of the document recipients 110 that are authorizedand/or required to access to the electronic documents 106.Pre-determined information relating to sender or recipient access rightsmay be stored or retrieved at computing systems 104. Such informationmay be stored in the form of sender or receiving entity profiles, wherea profile may contain information beyond access rights, such aspreferred document format, preferred computing systems of the recipient,prior document receipt information, etc. Profiles may also containpre-determined and static information relating to the recipient entityitself such as address, phone number, etc. In some embodiments,computing systems 104 may access profile information from a remoteserver. It will be appreciated that profile information may be updatedautomatically at computing systems 104 or wherever it is stored based onchanges in recipient information.

In some situations, the order may require certain parties not onlyaccess the electronic documents 106, but additionally verify that theyhave been received. For example, orders with service of processrequirements must be verifiably delivered to a receiving party. Certainaccess restrictions may be associated with the order as determined bythe issuing entity. For instance, certain orders may be sealed, and thusonly the receiving entity may access the document. In some embodiments,electronic documents 106 may be automatically transmitted to the one ormore document recipients 110 based on information contained within theelectronic documents. For instance, the software may recognize that adefendant has several accounts at various financial institutions namedin the order that are required to receive the order. The software maythen automatically distribute the order to the named financialinstitutions based on the information processed in electronic documents106.

FIG. 2 illustrates the process flow of an exemplary application 200configured to generate and/or modify electronic versions of courtdocuments 204. The application 200 may be installed and executed oncomputing device(s) 104. In certain embodiments application 200 may bemade accessible to a user, e.g. court officer 202 through a secureconnection to an online portal or webpage displayed at computingdevice(s) 104. As illustrated in FIG. 2, a court officer 202 may entercourt order information into application 200 using computing device 104.Each document 204 may have a predefined format that is comprised ofsections 206. Sections 206 are related to specific order information,such as that required by court orders, levies, garnishments, subpoenas,etc. As an example, a court order could have a predefined formatincluding information related to which court is issuing the order, thetype of order, case number, the name of the plaintiff, the name of thedefendant, the terms of the order etc. In some embodiments, sections 206include only general information serving as a placeholder for morespecific information which can be entered by the court officer 202. Forexample, a predefined format may have a field entitled “ISSUING COURT”which can be replaced or overwritten by the court officer 202 with theappropriate court issuing the order, in this example, the Superior Courtof the State of California. Certain of these sections 206 may bepre-populated such that the court officer 202 is not required tomanually enter information into those sections. Pre-population of thesections 206 may be accomplished via a connection between the computingdevice 104 and court databases 208. In some embodiments, pre-populationof sections 206 is accomplished through the use of various profiles.Profiles may be linked to the court officer 202, such that informationpertaining to the type and content of orders generated by the courtofficer 202 may be pre-entered into an order. Profiles may also relateto or describe the issuing court or one or more of the recipients.

Court databases 208 may comprise one or more computer servers or similardata repositories configured to store information related to the courtdocuments. In some embodiments the court databases 208 are configured tostore historical data related to prior orders such as related documentsand/or information regarding receiving parties. Historical data mayenable the court databases 208 to organize, aggregate, or otherwise linkcertain aspects of prior orders for quicker retrieval or additionalbatching. Certain receiving parties (not shown in FIG. 2) may berequired to audit the orders they have received over a certain period oftime and thus historical data stored at court databases 208 may be usedto deliver information regarding a totality of orders transmitted to andreceived by a receiving party during a period of time. In someembodiments, historical data may be used to generate, pre-populatefields, or otherwise modify an order at computing device 104.

Some orders stored at the court databases 208 may be redacted orotherwise modified to prevent non-public information from being storedand/or retrieved from the court databases 208. In some embodiments,application 200 is configured to process the entered and/or retrievedinformation to generate electronic versions of court documents 204 andstore those documents into the database 108 for retrieval by ortransmission to document recipients 110 (not shown in FIG. 2). Incertain embodiments, the nature and content of the orders generated atcomputing systems 104 may require that the documents 204 not be modifiedonce they are transmitted to database 108. Certain protections may beplaced on the documents 204 or certain sections 206 that prevent anyfurther modification after they generated and completed at computingdevices 104. In certain embodiments, a unique digital signature may beapplied to the document 204 after it has been completed. The digitalsignature may be analyzed at database 108 or by document recipients inorder to verify that the document 204 and its content has not beenmodified by an unauthorized party. It will be appreciated that, inreference to FIG. 2, court databases 208 and database 108 may compriseone or more servers, databases, or other data repositories incommunication with each other. In some embodiments, court databases 208and database 108 are embodied on the same server or collection ofservers.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary application 300 in which a user, e.g.lawyer 302, clerk, or other person associated with a law firm or othernon-court entity interacts with the order aggregation system of thepresent disclosure, e.g. order aggregation system 100. In suchembodiments, lawyer 302 may interact with a computing device 104 toretrieve information from a law firm database 304 which comprisesinformation pertaining to an ongoing legal matter. In such exemplaryembodiments, the computing device 104 may also retrieve information fromelectronic versions of court documents 204 stored in the database 108.The retrieved information may be combined with information entered bythe lawyer 302 or may be used alone, to create electronic communications306 which are stored into the database 108 for retrieval or transmissionto document recipients 110 (not shown in FIG. 3).

In some exemplary embodiments, a user, e.g. user 102, 202, and/or 302can select document recipients 110 to receive or have access toelectronic court documents 204, electronic communications 306, or otherelectronic documents that are stored in the database 108. As shown inthe exemplary application 400 illustrated in FIG. 4, a user 102 may bepresented with a user interface 402 that allows the user to select froma list of recipients to receive or have access to the certain electronicdocuments 404. The selections associated with these electronic documents404 are stored in the database 108 and used by the system to identifydocument recipients 110 who are to have access to or be provided withcopies of the electronic documents. For example, a user may select BigBank One, and Small-Town Savings and Loan as requiring access to anelectronic document 404, e.g. a garnishment order for Adam AccountHolder. This access authorization is then associated with thegarnishment order and the association is stored in the database 108.Later, a representative of Small Town Savings and Loan automaticallyreceives or may request documents pertaining to Adam Account Holder. Insuch an exemplary embodiment, the documents selected by the automatedprocess or representatives request is compared with the withassociations stored in the database 108 to determine whether thepermission level associated with user 102 is sufficient to permit therequested document to be disclosed to a requested document user. Inaddition to identifying those recipients, the selections can be used tocause copies of the electronic documents 404 to be formatted in a mannerthat is usable by the document recipients. For example, certain documentrecipients may require the electronic documents in a Portable DocumentFormat (PDF), while other document recipients may require theinformation from the electronic documents in a row and column format. Aswill be appreciated by those of skill in the art, many differentpossible document formats may be utilized and thus, this disclosureshould not be limited to exemplary PDF and row and column formats.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method 500 foraggregating legal orders.

It will be appreciated that the illustrated method 500 and associatedsteps may be performed in a different order, with illustrated stepsomitted, with additional steps added, or with a combination ofreordered, combined, omitted, or additional steps.

In step 502, a user (e.g. user 102, 202, and/or 302), creates a documentin an electronic format using a portal or software application asdiscussed with regard to FIGS. 1-3. In step 504, the document istransmitted to and stored in an aggregation database, e.g. database 108.The document may be aggregated with like documents or orders asdetermined by the aggregation database. Document or order aggregationmay be performed according to a number of factors including, but notlimited to, court or jurisdiction, sender, order type (e.g. levy, courtorder, subpoena, information subpoena restraining notice (ISRN), etc.),receiving party, legal entity, etc. In certain embodiments, the documentcreated at step 502 may be encrypted at the point of creation, e.g. oncomputing device 104, or may alternatively be transmitted to anintermediary system to perform encryption. If encryption of the documentis performed at an intermediary system, the encrypted document may besent back to the user 102 to transmit to the aggregation database or maybe transmitted directly form the intermediary system to the aggregationdatabase. In some exemplary embodiments, desired document recipients 110are selected by the user in step 506. If that selection indicates thatan intended document recipient 110 requires that the document be in aparticular format suitable for effective service to a specificrecipient, a format conversion is triggered to modify the document instep 508. In some embodiments, the format conversion may altercharacteristics of the documents. For example, a document may beconverted from a user-editable document (e.g. Microsoft Word® .doc or.docx files) to a non-editable file format (e.g. portable documentformat .pdf or the like). It will be further appreciated that someformat conversions may strip away, delete, or otherwise removeadditional data associated with a document, e.g. metadata. Either anunmodified document or a modified document is delivered electronicallyto the document recipients 110 in step 510. In some exemplaryembodiments, the intended document recipient 110 may require that thedocument be provided in a paper or other hardcopy format. In such cases,step 508 may result in the automatic generation of such a paper or otherhardcopy format. In such instances, the document would not be deliveredelectronically in step 510 but instead may be delivered via mail,courier or other method of transporting paper or hardcopy documents.

In some exemplary embodiments, the intended document recipient 110receives and processes the document in step 512 in order to take actionsrequired as a result of what is contained in the document. For example,if the document requires that some action be taken with regard to anaccount at a financial institution, the document data may be processedand delivered to an automated account management function so that thenecessary actions can be performed automatically.

While the present disclosure and associated concepts have beenillustrated by the description of various embodiments thereof, and whilethese embodiments have been described in considerable detail, it is notthe intention of the Applicant to restrict or in any way limit the scopeof the disclosure to the specific embodiments described. Additionaladvantages and modifications will readily appear to those skilled in theart. Moreover, in some instances, elements described with one embodimentmay be readily adapted for use with other embodiments. Therefore, thedisclosure, in its broader aspects, is not limited to the specificdetails, the representative apparatus, and illustrative examples shownand described. Accordingly, departures may be made from such detailswithout departing from the spirit or scope of the general disclosedconcepts.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method for electronically distributinglegal orders, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of orders;receiving a selection of at least one of a plurality of receivingentities to receive the plurality of orders; aggregating the pluralityof orders based on the selection of the at least one of the plurality ofreceiving entities; and transmitting the aggregated orders to the atleast one of the plurality of receiving entities, wherein the pluralityof receiving entities comprises at least a first receiving entityrequiring a first order format and a second receiving entity requiring asecond order format, and the method further includes: converting theplurality of orders into a compatible format based on at least onereceiving entity profile.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:converting the aggregated orders to a common format compatible with theat least one of the plurality of receiving entities.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising: converting the aggregated orders to acommon format compatible with the first order format and the secondorder format.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: verifyingthat at least one of the plurality of receiving entities received theorder.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the order has a unique digitalsignature.
 6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receivinghistorical data related to past orders transmitted to at least one ofthe plurality of receiving entities.
 7. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: receiving at least one response to the aggregated order fromthe at least one of the plurality of receiving entities.
 8. A system forelectronically distributing legal orders, the system comprising: anorder aggregation database configured to: receive a plurality of orders;receive a selection of at least one of a plurality of receivingentities; aggregate the plurality of orders based on the selection ofthe at least one of the plurality of receiving entities; and transmitthe aggregated orders to the at least one of the plurality of receivingentities, wherein the plurality of receiving entities comprises at leasta first receiving entity requiring a first order format and a secondreceiving entity requiring a second order format, and wherein the orderaggregation database is further configured to convert the plurality oforders into a compatible format based on at least one receiving entityprofile.
 9. The system of claim 8; wherein the order aggregationdatabase is further configured to: convert the aggregated orders to acommon format compatible with the least one of the plurality ofreceiving entities.
 10. The system of claim 9, wherein the orderaggregation database is further configured to convert the order to aformat compatible with the first order format and the second orderformat.
 11. The system of claim 8, wherein the order aggregationdatabase is further configured to verify that the at least one of theplurality of receiving entities received the order.
 12. The system ofclaim 8, wherein the order has a unique digital signature.
 13. Thesystem of claim 8, wherein the order aggregation database is furtherconfigured to receive historical data relating to past orders.
 14. Thesystem of claim 13, wherein the aggregation of the plurality of ordersis based on at least one aggregation factor.
 15. The system of claim 13,wherein the historical data is received as part of a receiving entityprofile.
 16. The system of claim 15, wherein the receiving entityprofile is automatically updated based on changes in receiving entityinformation.
 17. A non-transitory computer readable medium configured tostore instructions, such that when the instructions are executed by aprocessor, they cause the processor to perform the following: receivinga plurality of orders; receiving a selection of at least one of aplurality of receiving entities to receive the plurality of orders;aggregating the plurality of orders based on the selection of the atleast one of the plurality of receiving entities; and transmitting theaggregated orders to the at least one of the plurality of receivingentities, wherein the plurality of receiving entities comprises at leasta first receiving entity requiring a first order format and a secondreceiving entity requiring a second order format, and when theinstructions are executed by the processor, they cause the processor tofurther perform the following: converting the plurality of orders into acompatible format based on at least one receiving entity profile.